Tuesday, November 4, 2008

The story of Re-Org(s) 1.0,2.0,3.0......

I have not blogged on this post for a while now. Reason being that it has taken me some time to absorb developments around me as it has happened.
The flavour this witness seems to be re organisation. Re organisation broadly put is aligning structure around strategy. So it is change mandated by Porter's five forces model or rather the changes in the five forces. So if your strategy is sound then your re-org will be seen as pro-active. How ever the question i intend to ask is 'What if there are re-org version 1.0, 2.0,3.0 and so on'.
One view is that in uncertain atmosphere pre emptive changes are positive. On the other hand it is just so confusing and unsettling. A re organisation takes time to settle in, a new re organisation is bound to confound and hassle more. That it also gives a feeling that the organisation knows nothing on which way it is headed is another point alltogether.Suddenly more people crowd the smoking alleys and the lunch table conversations are sessions of intellectualization, which is something that the young and old executives and managers love doing.
There is more than a fair share of anguish and anxiety amongst the people in office, rumours run wild and all that suffers is real work at hand.
It is only fair to assume that strategy in a fast changing landscape is redundant with every new evolution in technology (especially in the internet age). Perhaps the leadership teams are not enabled to predict future as it unfolds. Hence changes in structure and processes are reactions that happen as the scenarios unfold. However, i sometimes am tempted to think that most of these reactions happen on grounds which is removed from the traditional atrenghts of the company. Should organizations work on hard platforms based on their strenghts building into the future? Or should they start building the staircase from the future into the present ground. I somehow feel that the strenghts-->future route is far better than the backward integration from future into the present.
Re-Org 1.0,2.0,3.0 are hence sometimes avoidable as you build your strenght into future...